


A Complicated Man

by Palebluedot



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, Gods, M/M, as a classics student I should know better than to call this an Odyssey AU and yet here we are, at the least I threw an Odyssey-inspired filter over everything, now get ready for me to work out my very complicated feelings about Silver's role in that story, you've heard of Flint as Odysseus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-03 05:20:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17277818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palebluedot/pseuds/Palebluedot
Summary: Tell me about a complicated man.--Silver's island has not known visitors for some time.





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> Summary quote from _The Odyssey_ , 1.1, translated by Emily Wilson.

“Release me,” barks the sailor with ragged breath, “whoever you are.”

“A little gratitude wouldn't go amiss,” Silver says smoothly, hauling the sailor another step towards shore. The man must have lost his shoes to the current; his heels dig deep into the dark sand.

“I said, _release_ me!” he growls, thrashing still harder against Silver's grip.

His patience run out, Silver speaks a word to the water still in the man's lungs, persuades it to sap more of his strength. He feels the moment it begins to work, when the weight sags in his arms. Harmless as a caught fish he is now, limbless and gasping.

But still, he speaks. “Let me _go_.” Bloated with brine, water-weakened, a drowned spirit in all but his still-warm blood — and yet he reaches towards the horizon as if to swim. Silver has not pulled many men from the sea in his time, but he has knowledge enough of mortals to know this to be strange. Strange enough, at least, to save the sailor from seeing his wish granted.

“I think not,” Silver says. The sand beneath his feet is drier now, though the waters still lap at him. “We're nearly there, after all.”

“No.” The sailor's voice is nearly lost to the roar of the storm. “I was so close,” he whispers. His eyelids flutter shut. “I was so close.”

 

 

The storm passes, though the sea remains gray as iron. The sailor sleeps, or does not wake, at least, for the better part of a day. Silver coaxes the brine from his lungs, pours fresh water down his throat, and does no more. Perhaps he'll live. Perhaps he won't. It hardly makes a difference in the end. Even the youngest of mortals carries the mark of death from the moment they're born, like the withering of a leaf that's been cut from its branch. And this is no young man lying before him.

This sailor didn't seem to understand that, when the storm held him in its maw. Or perhaps he understood it as well as any god. Silver's seen countless ships dashed on the rocks beyond his beach, seen their hulls break open like eggs. He's watched the sailors' feeble struggling, watched them swim and gasp and drown. But he's never seen ferocity such as he saw when this man grappled with another for a floating scrap of wreckage, cracked his head with a blow and held his bleeding body beneath the water until his grasping hands stilled.

The boards were weak, the rope frayed. Silver saw the moment the raft worth killing for began to fall to nothing. And the sailor kept pushing it the wrong way. He didn't pray to any gods for his deliverance. Silver never would've saved him if he had.

At last, the sailor opens his eyes. He groans feebly and raises a hand to rub at his head, the tangled, salt-dulled red. He sees Silver, and pushes himself up on one arm. “My ship?” he rasps.

“You lived,” says Silver with mild interest.

The sailor glowers. “My _ship._ Tell me what's become of — _”_ And then the coughing begins.

“Most drown,” says Silver, leaning forward. A painful, hacking thing, from the sound of it. No wonder, from such abused lungs. “You would have too, you know, had I not intervened.”

“Oh for _fuck's_ sake,” spits the sailor, his eyes surely stinging. “Would you stop fishing for some kind of reward and tell me how my _ship_ fared?”

Silver raises his eyebrows. “Why, a simple walk along the beach could tell you that much. I don't imagine you could take two steps without tripping over the wreckage.” And he gestures to the mouth of the cave, and the sailor sees for himself.

He groans again, and passes a hand over his face. He keeps it there for some time. His chest rises, then falls.

Silver shakes his head. “Honestly, Captain, I don't know what other outcome you expected. When the sea lord spits out a ship-killer like that, he always gets his way.”

“ _Don't_ talk to me about...” The sailor lowers his hand, exposes one sharp-edged eye. “I never told you I was captain.”

Shrewd, this one. “You didn't need to,” says Silver, and then he watches. Watches the sailor's eyes pass over him from head to foot and linger on the latter, watches them catch on every edge of the gnarled coral and barnacle-crusted driftwood that melds seamlessly into the flesh of his knee.

When the sailor's eyes return to Silver's face, there's understanding in them. “A god, are you?” he asks.

Smiling slowly, Silver nods.

“Then you're of little use to me.”

Silver blinks. “I beg your pardon?”

“You'll forgive me if I dispense with the usual bowing and scraping,” the sailor grits out as he fits his hand to a hollow in the wall of the cave and pulls himself to his feet. “I have grown all too used to gods.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although this chapter is short, longer ones are in the works, and because this is up, I actually have to write them. Oops. Right now I'm aiming for monthly updates, but that could shift in either direction, depending — I've never really gone for Plot before, so we're all learning about how I approach these logistics together. 
> 
> Special thanks to [AstronautSquid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid), the best cephalopod writing buddy ever! Go read [amalgam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17277656/chapters/40633013) while you're on here <3
> 
> Comments are love <3


	2. Xenia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to [AstronautSquid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid) for all her input <3 I'd never have gotten off my ass and actually started writing this without her!

The beach is rosy with evening by the time Silver makes his way down from the orchard to the water's edge. One hand over his eyes, he peers into the glare of the sunset. White froth laps at his ankles before retreating back to sea, pulling the sand beneath his feet with it, and at last, he spots the sailor, up to his waist in water a little down the shore.

As Silver approaches, he sees that he's puling a splintered scrap of his ship behind him, trudging slowly towards a pile of flotsam stacked pyre-like on the sand. 

“You're still here,” he says flatly upon Silver's approach.

“Of course,” Silver replies. “It is my island, after all.”

“Is it now.” He shoulders past Silver, heaves his bundle of planks onto the pile, then turns back to the water. When he passes Silver, he squints a moment, but does not stop. “Last I checked, gods didn't need to eat.”

Silver reaches out a hand, stops the sailor walking. “Last I checked, mortals _do_.” He offers the basket he carries, spilling over with bread and olives, fruit and dark wine. “Come, sit, you must be tired from...whatever this is that you're doing.”

The sailor eyes the basket, but takes nothing. “I'll decline.”

“There's nothing to fear,” Silver laughs. “You are my guest, after all, and basest etiquette demands that I not poison you.”

“Even so.” The sailor's scrutinizing gaze flits upwards. “Why have you come here?”

“As I've said, this is my island, and you are my guest. Guests are a rare pleasure here, and I _had_ hoped to become better acquainted over a meal.” With that, he sits cross-legged at the base of the pile, just on the fringes of the tide, and places the basket beside him. A wave rolls in, and he spreads his arms. “It's only proper, after all.”

The sailor blinks incredulously down at him. “A lecture on etiquette, from one of your kind.”

 _One of your kind —_ Silver could laugh again. Such naked scorn is novel from a mortal as wretched as this, clad in bloodied rags and swaying with weariness, even as he pulls his shoulders back. “I'm giving no lecture,” says Silver. “Be that as it may, I'm still willing to play my part, even if you should decline to play yours.”

The sailor scoffs, and turns back to the sea. Silver smiles, and breaks open the bread with his hands. He watches as the sailor's steps give way to swimming strokes as he pursues another remnant of his ship. The flashing water, the darkening sky — his small silhouette nearly disappears between them, swallowed by the vastness above and below. His return to shore is slower than his journey out, forced as he is to swim one-armed by his burden. When he walks again on land, Silver can see the sand shifting and sinking beneath the sailor's unshod feet, how he stumbles and steadies.

“Have you a name?” Silver calls as the sailor passes. “Or shall I just call you Captain?”

“I'm not,” says the sailor, panting, “much of a captain anymore.” He leans his back against the great heap of wreckage his labors have just enlarged. With his head tilted back, he stands with his throat exposed to the light of the first brilliant star. “Considering I've no ship to speak of.”

“And no crew either, I suppose.” Silver's eyes travel to another sort of wreckage a ways down the beach, its tattered clothes and lifeless face rubbing against the sand with each push of the tide. He can find no evidence of the retrieval of any of its kind, in contrast to the rope and wood beside him. “Will you be getting that?”

The sailor follows the line of Silver's outstretched finger, and his eyes darken. “Fools, all,” he mutters, perhaps to himself. “Fools to a man. If they'd only _listened_.”

“Listened to what?”

The sailor huffs, shakes his head. “I don't have time for this,” he says, and pocks the beach with yet more tracks.

“Come now, we were getting somewhere!” Silver calls after him, his grin wide. He pours the wine as the sailor wades back into the water. It's a longer wait this time due to the size of the sailor's prize: a splinter of mast, a tattered sail streaming behind it like a veil. The sailcloth dirties, drags through the sand as the sailor hauls it slowly up the beach.

“ _Do_ you have a name, then?” Silver asks when the sailor is once again within earshot. “I don't believe you answered me earlier.”

“For _fuck's_ sake,” the sailor curses, throwing down the mast. “Why is it that your kind can never just leave a man _be?_ Can't you see that I've a great deal to do, and very little time in which to do it?” With his arm flung wide, he indicates the sea still dotted with bobbing wood and trailing ropes, and the sun's slow slippage past the horizon. “I am trying,” he snaps, “to salvage what I can so that I might build something at least remotely seaworthy and _leave_. I've no wish to be your _guest_ , I wish to go _home,_ and your incessant prattling in my ear does nothing to aid me in that.”

“Oh,” smiles Silver. “Is that all? Why, you should have said.” And with that, he reaches out an arm and beckons the sea towards him with one crooked finger. As if the idea were its own, the wave swells up, towers over the mirrored surface of the sea, then collapses with a crash, the pieces of the shattered ship rolling off its back and onto the powdered sand. At the sailor's incredulous stare, Silver gives a minute shrug. “It turns out that _my kind_ are good for more than simply pestering yours.”

“...So it would seem,” says the sailor, and in the flickering of his expression, Silver reads relief, the barest shadow of contrition, and a dawning frustration at the realization that Silver could have ended his labors at any time, and waited until now.

“No matter,” says Silver with a wave of his hand, electing to comment on none of it. “You've had a tiring day, Captain...?”

And he waits.

 “Flint,” says the sailor after a fashion, looking at the sailor with narrowed eyes. “I'm called Flint.”

Silver smiles. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Flint.” A curious name, both soft and hard on Silver's tongue.

 

 

It does not take long for Flint to drag the last pieces of his ship the short distance to where he wants them. With the last of the light gone, Silver invites him to sleep in the cave where he took him when he first arrived, on the pallet he laid out there. Much to his surprise, Flint nods and follows. Perhaps, thinks Silver, satisfied, there is some trust growing between them after all, but that thought vanishes when he tries again to offer a meal and is met only with that same look of disdain.

Flint sinks down onto the pallet with hardly a word, and his breathing slows within moments. _They tire so easily_ , Silver thinks, looking down. His gaunt, lined face and frail form look as smoke to Silver, like he would vanish to nothing in the light. The very picture of mortality. Turning his back, he steps out into the night.

Flint emerges shortly before the dawn comes over the island, muted and gray. His feet point him down towards the beach before Silver can bid him good morning, so he follows, watching curiously. In daylight, he does not fade and disappear after all, but holds himself together all the tighter. He walks as though he is still on the deck of a ship, like he still wears a blade at his belt. With sun-browned hands, Flint dismantles and rearranges the pile he built the night prior, and they, too, hold that mortal's illusion of authority as they work.

When he is done, he stares down at it with that scrutinizing gaze. “It's not enough,” he mutters once it's all laid before him, shaking his head. These are the first words of the day. “Not enough to build with.”

“A pity,” says Silver, “that you've no other sources of lumber nearby.” He raises his eye to the cliffs, every inch of them covered with green boughs swaying in the breeze, glad, at last, of the opportunity to offer this reminder.

Flint tracks his gaze. “A pity indeed.”

“What — ” Silver whips his head around. “Wait a moment. I can understand your wariness to _eat_ anything from my island, unwarranted as it may be, but surely you can't believe that simply felling a few trees will do you any harm?”

“Of course not. But I'm certain I'll not care to pay the associated price.”

“There's no price. They're my gift to you. Is that so hard for you to believe?”

“If you'd lived the life I have,” says Flint, “you'd know that it is.”

Silver sighs. “See if this will convince you, then. If you never build your raft, then you never _leave —_ and what possible reason could I have for wanting you to stay? You haven't any possessions I could want, you have no abilities that would be of use to me, and you've _hardly_ been scintillating company. You're an ordinary mortal. It's no concern of mine whether you wither and die here or elsewhere, but if you'd prefer to do so at home instead of starving to death here, I suggest that you accept the fact that, whether you like it or not, I am your ally.

“What's more,” interrupts Silver when Flint opens his mouth, “I swear on the health of the island I am tied to, I will ask no favors, nor promises, nor payment of any kind in exchange for my _extremely_ generous gift of materials with which you may build your damned raft. Does that satisfy you?”

The words all flown from his mouth, Silver watches them land. Flint hardly flinched during his speech, held fast to the arrow-straight posture of a king, even as he stood over rubble, and he still does not move now — until, slowly, he nods. “It does.” Even his mouth hardly moves to form the words.

Relief then, and triumph. Progress after all. “Very well. Then I'll go fetch an axe, shall I?” As he turns to go, Silver's eye catches once more on the corpse fouling the beach. “Shall I also fetch a spade?”

Flint's face darkens. “Let the water take him. Gods know it takes everything else.”

 

 

The walk to the forest is silent but for their footsteps and the distant sigh of the waves. Off the beach, past the cave, past the orchard they walk, until they reach the place where the trees grow wilder, cypress and poplar and fir stretching to the sky.

“Have your pick,” says Silver, opening an arm in invitation.

Something passes through Flint's eyes when he takes the offered axe, a glimmer of sorts. His hands close easily around the handle. He strides up to the tree nearest to him, swings from the shoulder, and parts the rough bark beneath his blade as easily as a man dividing clay.

Silver leans lightly against the trunk of a nearby tree, still too green to be of use. Little by little, Flint carves a hole in the canopy of green above, and as the day drags on, the light that falls through it streams down golden, tinged with rose. He does not pause between felling his last tree and beginning to strip each trunk of their branches and cut them to length.

At last, he stands back, sinks the blade of the axe into the largest stump. “Have you an adze, by chance?” he asks, sitting heavily down beside it.

 _He speaks_ , thinks Silver, and the corner of his mouth curves upwards. Nodding, he turns over his shoulder. Unhindered by any trailing mortals he must lead, he returns in moments with the adze in one hand, and a fresh basket in another.

“My thanks,” says Flint, taking the adze. Predictably, he pays the basket no mind.

Gingerly, Silver sits on a nearby stump. “It's no trouble,” he replies. “In fact, I'd be happy to do more to help, but, well, I expect you'd refuse.”

“You'd expect correctly.” Flint narrows his eyes. “To be frank, I'm not sure what a sea deity would know of woodworking, regardless.”

“Didn't I ever say?” asks Silver, knowing he hadn't. “I'm no sea deity. I'm the guardian of this island, which, you may have noticed, is forested. So, perhaps I'd be more help than you realize.”

“An island guardian,” Flint repeats, amused. “So you've hardly any godhead in you at all.”

Silver shrugs. “I've enough that the surrounding waters answer primarily to me, and not the sea lord — rather fortunately for you, I might add. Besides,” he adds, “sometimes it pays to inhabit only the fringes of my world. The center can become rather...treacherous.”

Flint inclines his head in silent assent. His brow, his neck, his arms are all beaded with sweat. Despite the rest, his chest still heaves. Thirst must be growing overwhelming by now.

Silver pours the wine. “Especially so when the sea lord decides to get involved,” he muses. Swirling the wine in his cup, he shakes his head. “Life would be far simpler without him for a relative, I daresay.”

A bark of laughter nearly startles Silver into spilling his wine. It seems to surprise Flint for a moment too, though it sprang from his own mouth, a cold, toothy thing, poured from low in his throat. “Wise words,” says Flint, when his breath is once again his own.

Silver furrows his brow, then quickly smooths it over again. There's no divinity in the man seated across from him, not a solitary spark. And yet, it makes little sense that an ordinary man, who knows nothing of the sprawling spiderweb that is the family of the gods, should react so strongly to such a remark, not when he's been positively taciturn in the face of everything else. It must be that he simply harbors a particular ill will towards the sea lord after being shipwrecked so savagely —

— more savagely than any shipwreck Silver's seen in the past millennium. So savagely that he couldn't help but take an interest in the sole survivor, for surely he was the victim of far more than the random ire of a mercurial god. Silver searches his memory, just how long ago did he hear of that great outrage? Ten years is a long time for mortals, but perhaps it's _possible —_ it must be. He feels quite the fool for not piecing it together sooner. Of course this man knows what it is to be related to the sea lord.

Just not by blood.

Silver matches his own smile to Flint's. “Rude old bastard, isn't he?”

“That,” says Flint, “I'll drink to,” and with a weary hand, brings his cup to his lips.

 

 

Flint does not sleep until the last log has been smoothed, each imperfection shaved off with quick, precise strikes of the adze. He could be persuaded to eat only a meager supper, but he did eat — Silver supposes that finding himself neither dead nor enchanted from the wine must have been convincing.

His guest seen to, he walks from the cave, down to the beach, and into the waves. He treads easily along the sea floor, and does not stop until all is water above him. Just as the pressure begins to become oppressive, he feels a shimmer ripple down his leg. Beyond the boundaries of his island, the glamour falls away, and were there any light to see by this far down in the depths, his leg would gleam, coral and driftwood no longer, but smooth, soft metal for which he was named.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I haven't posted a "Chapter 2" of anything for years — I hope you enjoyed it! Hopefully the next chapter won't be too far off, but, well, y'all know how it is. 
> 
> Comments are love <3


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